Real-time single entry multiple carrier interface (SEMCI)

ABSTRACT

A method and system for converting ACORD XML files to and from ACORD AL3 files in real-time. The method for converting from ACORD XML to ACORD AL3 format includes: applying a stylesheet to at least one ACORD XML file thereby generating at least one data record in an intermediate format and including information included in the at least one ACORD XML file; and, translating the at least one record in the intermediate format to ACORD AL3 format. The method for converting from ACORD AL3 files to ACORD XML files includes: translating at least one record including information stored in the ACORD AL3 file format to an intermediate format; and, applying a stylesheet to the at least one record in the intermediate format thereby generating at least one ACORD XML file being indicative of the information and suitable for transmission.

FIELD OF INVENTION

[0001] This invention relates generally to the implementation of several standards developed by ACORD, an insurance industry standards organization; and particularly to a Web Transaction Interface, XML Insurance and Surety Service Specification, and the EDI standard AL3.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] The present Single Entry Multiple Carrier Interface (SEMCI) evolved out of the need for independent insurance agents to submit information to multiple to insurance carriers. Historically, agents were required to use forms and systems provided by each carrier. Information common to all carriers was re-entered for each carrier creating redundant work for agents. To reduce this redundant work, ACORD defined the EDI standard known as AL3 and SEMCI was adopted as an insurance industry approach.

[0003] AL3 is focused on the communication between insurance carriers, their agents and other trading partners and has been in use since the 1980's. This EDI standard is a common set of rules that allow separate computer systems to talk to each other, to communicate policy data, accounting data, claims data, and application data for personal and commercial insurance, surety and specialty lines. SEMCI was implemented as a batch-oriented, store-and-forward “Electronic Data Interchange” (EDI) model using a private computer network. Agents and carriers submit EDI transactions over a private computer network to a clearinghouse. The clearinghouse places transactions in the “mail box” of the appropriate party and delivers the contents of each party's “mail box” to them on request.

[0004] With the advent of the Internet and related Internet standards, secure business-to-business commerce over a public network is now a reality. The insurance industry seeks to exploit this capability and Real-Time SEMCI is an implementation of electronic business-to-business commerce for insurance. Real-Time SEMCI provides agents the ability to enter data once into their agency management system and transmit that data over the Internet to multiple insurance company systems. The receiving insurance carriers process the transactions and return replies to the agent. For example, agents can request and receive quotes or submit applications for insurance. The implementation of Real-Time SEMCI relies on ACORD's Web Transaction Interface standard and ACORD's XML Insurance And Surety Service Specification. The Web Transaction Interface standard prescribes the communication protocol for this business as HTTP and it specifies an HTML form tag name that will contain transactions. ACORD's XML Insurance And Surety Service Specification defines business transactions using the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) XML standard.

[0005] As is well understood by those possessing an ordinary level of skill in the pertinent art, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, is a request/response application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTML is an authoring language used to create documents accessible via the World Wide Web (WWW) or (Web). HTML defines a structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes. XML is a specification developed by the W3C especially for Web documents. XML allows designers to create their own customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations. Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a language for expressing stylesheets. It consists of a language for transforming XML documents, and an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics. An XSL stylesheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing how an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary.

[0006] It is an object of the present invention to translate from ACORD's XML Insurance And Surety Service Specification format to ACORD's AL3 EDI file format, so that insurance information communicated over the Internet or by other means and can be processed in the ACORD AL3 EDI file format.

[0007] It is a further object of the present invention to translate from ACORD's AL3 EDI file format to ACORD's XML Insurance And Surety Service Specification format so that insurance information processed in the AL3 format can be communicated over the Internet or by other means in ACORD's XML Insurance And Surety Service Specification format.

[0008] It is a further object of the invention to reduce the time and the cost required to rate and quote insurance policies.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

[0009] A method and system for converting ACORD XML files to and from ACORD AL3 files in real-time. The method for converting from ACORD XML to ACORD AL3 format includes: applying a stylesheet to at least one ACORD XML file thereby generating at least one data record in an intermediate format and including information included in the at least one ACORD XML file; and, translating the at least one record in the intermediate format to ACORD AL3 format. The method for converting from ACORD AL3 files to ACORD XML files includes: translating at least one record including information stored in the ACORD AL3 file format to an intermediate format; and, applying a stylesheet to the at least one record in the intermediate format thereby generating at least one ACORD XML file being indicative of the information and suitable for transmission.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

[0010] Various other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent by reading the following detailed description in conjunction with the drawings, which are shown by way of example only, wherein:

[0011]FIG. 1 illustrates a text form of an AL3 file format;

[0012]FIGS. 2a and 2 b illustrates a data hierarchy for the AL3 file format of FIG. 1;

[0013]FIG. 3 illustrates the data of the AL3 file format of FIG. 1 organized according to a preferred form of the present invention;

[0014]FIG. 4 illustrates a style sheet utilized according to the present invention;

[0015]FIG. 5 illustrates the data of FIG. 1 in an XML file format organized according to a preferred form of the present invention;

[0016]FIG. 6 illustrates a system topology overview utilized according to a preferred form of the present invention;

[0017]FIG. 7 illustrates an overview of XML file format to AL3 format translation and an AL3 file format to XML format translation according to a preferred form of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0018] The present invention, referred to as “Real-Time SEMCI”, uses two emerging ACORD standards: the Web Transaction Interface (WTI) and the XML Insurance and Surety Service Specification. The WTI enables companies to conduct transactions with agents over the Web instead of via relatively expensive private networks. The XML Insurance and Surety Service Specification defines a set of industry-standard business transactions.

[0019] In the explanation that follows, it is assumed that AL3 files originate with a carrier's system and XML files originate with a carrier's trading partner. The present invention operates to translate one into the other and vice versa.

[0020] Referring now to the Figures, like references identify like elements of the invention. As set forth, AL3 is an insurance industry standard file format, a sample of which appears in text form in FIG. 1. Note that to improve readability of the hierarchy, line breaks have been added between data groups to visually set them off from each other and that the data group names and processing levels have been highlighted. Of course, highlighting and line breaks do not exist in the normal AL3 file format. The 3 digits that follow the data group name determine the actual length of each data group (e.g. 1MHG data group is 161 characters long, 2TRG is 201, for example).

[0021] Referring still to FIG. 1, the formats are determined in advance based upon what kind of data the file will contain. Representative information contains data regarding by way of example, billing, new policy generation and inquiries regarding cancellation. The data format follows a hierarchy as indicated in FIGS. 2a and 2 b. As is well understood by those possessing an ordinary skill in the pertinent art, the ACORD AL3 format is based on data elements, data groups and hierarchies. An ACORD data element is the smallest piece of data collected and stored. Data Groups are logical collections of data elements. Hierarchies are used to establish a logical relationship of data groups to one another. In the hierarchy, each level is associated with the level immediately preceding it. For example, a Location group is associated with a Policy group, a Risk group is associated with a Location group and so on. If needed, “Dummy” Groups are created to preserve the hierarchy.

[0022] For sake of explanation the following discussion will follow a transaction which originates in a mainframe or other processing system such as that illustrated in FIG. 6. The text of FIG. 1 is a typical ACORD standard representation; in this instance for illustration an AL3 file delimited by the 1MHG and 3MTG data groups. The AL3 file of FIG. 1 contains one transaction that begins with the 2TRG and 2TCG data groups. Still referring to FIG. 1, the text thereof indicates that ACORD data group 5BIS follows. This data identifies the basic insured information related to this specific policy and other data as is well understood by those possessing ordinary skill in the pertinent art.

[0023] Referring now also to FIG. 7, the first step is to retrieve an AL3 file, such as that illustrated in FIG. 1 and discussed hereto, from the mainframe or other processing system computer 6 via a message server 5. The next step is to translate the data and organize it such as is illustrated in FIG. 3 utilizing a Faux File Generator application running on the application server 2, which receives the AL3 file retrieved. The Faux File generator application organizes or retranslates the ACORD file FIG. 1 into an intermediary file format such as that illustrated in FIG. 3 (referred to as Faux file 3 herein for sake of explanation) that can be read by a function that converts it to XML format. FIG. 3 illustrates the organization or ordering, e.g. parsing, of the AL3 file into a new kind of list which is referred to as a FAUX File 3, noting the references to 1MHG, 2TRG, 2TCG, and 5BIS. The data of the Faux file 3 is then translated into an ACORD XML for Insurance And Surety Service or other suitable tagged language as is shown in FIG. 5. Preferably, the process looks at each AL3 transaction, which begins with a 2TRG header.

[0024]FIGS. 3 and 5 show the hierarchical representation of the data in FIGS. 3 and 5, respectively.

[0025] An XML stylesheet such as that illustrated in FIG. 4 is preferably used to translate the Faux File of FIG. 3 to the XML file of FIG. 5 so that it contains the correct XML file format and accompanying data. There are preferably as many style sheets as there are “kinds of transactions” to translate.

[0026] The XML File 5 is then passed to Web Server 2 and is transmitted over the Internet 7 and received remotely, presumably by an agency system 1 of an agent of the insurance company utilizing conventional methodology.

[0027] The process is transitive or bi-directional in that an XML format file generated at an agency system 1 will be decoded or translated using a style sheet into a Faux file and then translated into the AL3 file format before being sent to the mainframe or other processing system computer 6.

[0028] Referring now also to FIG. 7, in other words XML request transactions are received from computer 1 of FIG. 6 and converted to pseudo AL3 request transactions, or faux files, by applying a stylesheet. The data from the created faux file is then translated into AL3 and delivered to the mainframe or other processing system 6. AL3 response transactions are generated by the processing system and are returned to the translation process. AL3 response files are converted into pseudo AL3 response transactions, or faux files. The data from the faux file is then translated into XML formatted files using a style sheet. The XML file can then be transmitted to suitable processor devices using the Internet.

[0029] For sake of completeness, and referring again to FIG. 6 and a preferred embodiment of a system for implementing the present invention, mainframe or other processing systems 6 are electronically communicable with message servers 5. The message servers 5 are conventionally communicable with application servers 3. Application servers 3 perform the translating of AL3 files to the faux file 3 format and apply the stylesheets 4 to code the faux files 3 in XML format. The application servers 3 are conventionally communicable with web servers 2 which are conventionally communicable with agency computers 1, via a suitable communications medium such as the global interconnection of computers and computer networks commonly referred to as the Internet 7. Directory servers 4 are also preferably utilized and are communicable with application servers 3.

[0030] Although the invention has been described and pictured in a preferred form with a certain degree of particularity, it is understood that the present disclosure of the preferred form, has been made only by way of example, and that numerous changes in the details of construction and combination and arrangement of parts may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as hereinafter claimed. It is intended that the patent shall cover by suitable expression in the appended claims, whatever features of patentable novelty exist in the invention disclosed. 

We claim:
 1. A method for converting at least one record from ACORD XML to ACORD AL3 format in real-time, said method comprising: applying a stylesheet to at least one ACORD XML file thereby generating at least one data record in an intermediate format and including information included in the at least one ACORD XML file; and, translating the at least one record in the intermediate format to ACORD AL3 format.
 2. A method for converting ACORD AL3 files to ACORD XML files in real-time, said method comprising: translating at least one record including information stored in the ACORD AL3 file format to an intermediate format; and, applying a stylesheet to said at least one record in said intermediate format thereby generating at least one ACORD XML file being indicative of said information and suitable for transmission.
 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said stylesheet is an XML stylesheet.
 4. The method according to claim 2, wherein said step of translating includes providing an application server to translate an AL3 file to a faux file and applying an XML stylesheet to code said faux file in SML format.
 5. The method according to claim 4, further including the step of transmitting said XML format over the Internet to a processor.
 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein said data record includes an insurance policy group.
 7. The method according to claim 6, wherein said data record further includes an insurance risk group.
 8. The method according to claim 2, wherein the step of applying a stylesheet is applying an XML stylesheet.
 9. The method according to claim 8, wherein said step of translating includes providing an application server to translate an AL3 file to a faux file and applying said XML stylesheet to code said faux file in XML format.
 10. The method according to claim 9, further including the step of transmitting said XML format over the Internet to a system processor. 